


To Kill A Mockingbird

by lazywriter7



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Feels, Arthur feels, Betrayal, Courtroom Drama, F/M, Friendship, Gwaine Centric, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Lancelot Feels, M/M, Merlin feels, Mildly Dystopic Setting, No character bashing, Protective Gwaine, Slow Burn, basically all the feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 15:42:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10193234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazywriter7/pseuds/lazywriter7
Summary: Merlin isn’t looking at him. He isn’t looking anywhere, just straight ahead, like a dead pair of eyes staring up into nothingness. “Gwen’s dead.”And before Gwaine can silence him, speak over that reedy, croaking voice and insult him for speaking complete, utter shit; Merlin rushes on, Adam’s apple swallowing in his throat, words falling all around themselves, in fearful, horrific bewilderment like he’s afraid what to do with them. “Gwen’s dead and-”“Gwaine?” Elena’s voice murmurs blearily from the top of the staircase, knuckles rubbing against her eyes, padding slowly down the steps. “Is there something wro-”“-and Arthur killed her.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> ....right. So this is something that has been sitting on my laptop for the past two years. It's unbetaed, and is most certainly a creation of young, inexperienced lazy. But I needed to put this up at some point, and apparently tonight's the night.
> 
> Warnings for bullshitted courtroom proceedings. Proper research on the horizon if this is to be continued. What's not bullshitted is the characterisation, which means please don't judge a story by its summary, there are reasons and motivations behind everyone's actions. Hope you like!
> 
> Title is from Harper Lee's fantastic novel.

Ash dribbles off from the edge of the cigarette, dirty white, a lining of faded gold peeking out from the crevices between the tips of strong fingers. They are long, with stubbed cuticles and a silver band gleaming dimly on the index; rusted, well-worn. They aren’t the only worn part about him. The jeans are messily folded, frayed cuffs bunching over the ankles, big toe poking out of a hole in the sock. Despite the mud flecks liberally smattered over the lower legs, the indistinguishable colour of the denim in the dark- the brand label peeping out from the waistline, below the stretch of exposed skin and his navel, is still unmistakable.

 

Gwaine stretches out, till the back of his knees make complete contact with the cobbled stone, the back of his head knocking against the parapet, chin lifting up against the sky. His hand, awkwardly cradled on his chest for lack of space, curls in on itself- nails embedding into the palm, paper crinkling within its grasp till the cinders make contact with toughened skin, the faint spark of pain-pleasure lighting itself along the edge of a nerve. One smooth flick of the nail, and the crushed cigarette goes careering off into the air, off the roof and plummeting out of sight. His hand unfolds slowly, palm smearing the ash on black Katrina Longhorn jacket lapels, and throws itself over the jumper-covered back rising and falling beside him, wrist dangling loose, grains of soot drifting down carelessly from the fingertips.

 

Merlin makes a gloriously disgusted face when the grey particles drift into his nose, he snuffles and generally lets out an array of indistinguishable sounds, assumedly of protest, squashing his cheek even further against the flat stone. Gwaine’s lips curve up- his friend has mastered the art of gracelessly sprawling over surfaces generally considered unsleepable by the sober, and snoring like a log till midday. He shakes his fingers a little more, if only for the petty joy of seeing that child-man face scowl in his sleep; then casts a half-discerning eye over the rest of the terrace. Arthur’s golden mop is visible in the gloam, even from a distance. His back is propped against the big, orange-brown plastic tub with the synthetic palm tree, head bowed, drool bubble on the lower lip trembling with every outward puff of breath. The door swings creakily in the wind; Leon and Elyan had stumbled off for more beer a long time ago, Elyan probably now sprawled over the steps on his stomach, half-dead, Leon similarly passed out on his bed, the sneaky bastard. Kay didn’t even turn up.

 

Gwaine’s fingers feel around for the glass of diluted whisky, scrabbling uselessly against the stone- he knows its been emptied hours ago, the remnants sloshing around the base of his gut. The warmth of the alcohol has long faded, the edge of the parapet digs mercilessly into his shoulder blades, his legs having lost all feeling quite some time ago. But the roof of St. Avalon’s is pleasantly peaceful at that witching hour between daylight and nighttime, nothing but stiled red rooftops for as far as the eye can see, the canvas stretching above their heads indigo blue except for the rip in the fabric some distance away into the horizon, colourless white. The tip of his nose is numb from the cold, the stench of sweat and alcohol lingering in the air sweet and familiar, and Gwaine lifts his face to the air again and closes his eyes, never asleep but mind wiped blank enough for it. He draws his sustenance from these moments. From these snatched hours of waking while his mates snored around him, mind falling asleep the moment the sun arose and day came upon them, the world waking around him.

 

 _Well done, de Bois._ Air breaths past his lips, mingling ceaselessly into the night. T _hat was almost philosophical._

 

The creak of the door being pushed open is abnormally loud in the silence.

 

Light, unobtrusive footsteps follow in its wake. An eyelid hovers open, slowly, as Gwaine surveys the new entry under the pitiful light of 3:30 a.m. and no stars. The man is down on a knee at Arthur’s feet, thumb an inch away from the former’s nostrils almost as if checking for breath. He gets to his feet seconds after, dusting his palms free of gravel, lips lifting into an absent smile barely visible three metres away. Gwaine clears his throat.

 

Lancelot’s head jerks to the side, smile erasing itself without taking any of the natural amiability away from the face, a feat which Gwaine appreciates in all its difficulty. His own face only has two modes- roguish charm and black anger (he refuses to acknowledge the existence of the ‘serious face’, with all the quotation marks it deserves because Merlin himself refers to it with quotation marks, desperately failing to keep a serious face all the while). He does feel flattered that the du Lac recognised his voice so well though. That picture perfect expression of even-tempered calm only came on in front of the college trustees, Uther Pendragon, and him.

 

It had only been a month. Lancelot du Lac had been a childhood friend of Arthur’s, a scholarship student at St. Avalon’s for as long as the gang had been here. His quite sizable brain and apparently undying dedication had secured him a one-year exchange to Mercia- enough time for new student Gwaine du Bois to worm his way into the widely-acknowledged coolest gang of Avalon, and make a permanent place there.

 

He’d had his moments of...... ‘mellowing down’, he called it, with each one of the group. There had been the running taps of the senior girl’s washroom and the subsequent detention with Merlin, the video game ‘man-squee session’ (hereby declaiming all words within quotations to be Merlin’s and Merlin’s alone) with Leon and Kay, the arm-wrestling session with Morgana (she was a part of the gang, no matter how much Arthur whined, and he would have _won_ , dammit, if it hadn’t been for that wicked heel boring a hole through his foot under the table). Then there was the my-stomach-is-a-bigger-dustbin-than-yours contest with Percy (he hadn’t even been hoping for a victory), the communal griping over the difficulty of Accounts with Elyan after the requisite hit-on-my-sister-again-and-you-die conversation had been done with, and of course- the right hand hook straight across the jaw with Arthur.

 

Lancelot had been.....well he is, more like, a little.......different. Firstly, he returned after a yearlong gap from a school teetering precariously at the edge of the earth (Merlin sent _letters_ to him for fuck’s sake, Gwaine found it manifestly ridiculous) to find the vacant space, his space, in the group filled by a boisterous, over-the-top, free spirited twenty-year old kicked out of three colleges previously. And Gwaine should strangle himself before he used a word as blasted Victorian and up-its-ass as _boisterous_ to describe himself, but somehow he has the feeling that that’s exactly how Lancelot views him, behind the steady brown eyes that are hostile to no one. Behind the ironed jumper, the dark blue denims, the untucked shirt, the faded sneakers gleaming even now under the approaching dawn- lurks something much more medieval and untarnished; behind the crisp English accent, the mind that flips through Asimov and Austen with equal ease, the impartial, carefully measured words- a sense of disapproval that radiates through every moment Gwaine feels that unbetraying gaze sweep over him. More simply put, they’re not the same kind of people, they’ve known each other for precious little time, and there’s always someone there, serving as barrier, proxy- for whenever Gwaine and Lancelot occupy the same room together.

 

They’re almost, technically, alone now though, and the moment is as unmomentous as any other. Gwaine feels more than sees Lancelot’s gaze alight on him, sees the incoming light of dawn flash off those brown eyes, and waits for something, head still tilted to the heavens. Lancelot doesn’t fidget, he hardly has any sort of nervous tic at all. Gwaine finds that mildly irritating.

 

“I came to check on them, have to be in the auditorium by nine tomorrow.” Lancelot’s voice has barely any rough edges, unlike Gwaine’s honey-on-gravel, but it couldn’t be called smooth either......just very constant. No hand movement towards the two sleeping beauties filling the air with their snores accompanies these words, it’s alright, Gwaine hardly needs an expansive hand gesture to understand he’s not a part of the ‘them’ being checked on anyway.

 

Without waiting for a reply, which is slightly rude, and unlike Lancelot, the straight shoulders turn, and crouch to duck beneath the doorway leading to the terrace. The registration of this fact (facts?) is followed a bare second later by, surprisingly, Gwaine’s own voice, remarkably free of alcohol, calling over the air- “Best of luck.”

 

Gwaine blinks a second later, he’s not used to niceties, least from himself. The cold is steadily seeping through the stone now, up the base of his spine, separated from the floor by a bare layer of denim. Lancelot doesn’t ask the questions whirling through Gwaine’s own mind- why luck? Leon’s the Valedictorian; but simply nods, not a hair or twitch out of place. “You too, Gwaine.”

 

Gwaine can’t help it- he laughs, a quiet, soundless whoosh of air pushed out of his chest through his lips. There’s a pause, and Lancelot raises an eyebrow. Its absurd how well visible it is, even with the distance.

 

Back of the skull still propped on the edge of the parapet, Gwaine rotates his head through a slow angle, eyes diverting from the horizontal line, eyes examining Lancelot edgeways. His head spins, but feels remarkably clear. “Is just that....” The laugh pushes itself out again, a little quieter, a little more deliriously amused. “It seems like a bloody privilege hearing my name from your lips, is’all.”

 

There’s more silence, and a part of his brain wishes Lancelot to attribute the undeniably moronic words to the haze of drink, and a bigger part that knows for sure it’s not. It’s all Gwaine, unadulterated Gwaine. Seconds later, the door shuts with an anticlimactic click, soft sneaker soles tapping down the stairs, fading away.

 

Gwaine closes his eyes again, and feels his lips stretch, broaden. There wasn’t a matching smile on Lancelot’s, no, not even amiability; and while he counts out the stars against his eyelids- a small spark of satisfaction settles itself into his chest.

 

 

 

~

 

 

       

“...and I’m really....really..”-hic!- “certain, of this more than anything el-”-hic!- “...else in the world, that you two were meant to be........and..... will be happiest together, to-...today and always.” Merlin finishes, a little lamely, interspersed with a lot of hiccupping, two spots of colour high on his cheekbones from the drink and the hundred stares currently scrutinising him. Gwen still beams when he’s done, dark eyes a little glassy under the sparkling light of the chandelier, her clapping the loudest among the disinterested applause. She is such a dear, Gwaine reflects, and of such a non-nauseating variety too, and its such a pity she refused to sleep with him.

 

It would be just happenchance though, that the one man she did accept as her bedmate would be the one Gwaine’s eyes would settle on, among and in spite of the scantily dressed else twittering in different corners of the reception hall, batting their mascara-coated eyelashes at him as he passes. Its not for lack of opportunity that he isn’t thwarted- Sophia almost blinds him with her peach silk draped breasts, corners of teeth smudged with red lipstick, stretched feline-wide in what is probably a smile- but Gwaine dodges and weaves and shoots groin-throbbing smiles and reaches his target undeterred. In spite of the trail of destruction (of the general female-kind) in his wake, the man slouched over the barstool is still unaware of his presence, and Gwaine refuses to let him persist in his bleak state of ignorance for any longer. For humanity’s sake.

 

So he sneaks up on the man, shooting a genial wink at the barman from the corner of his eye, and bends down low enough for his hair to brush the dark grey, vicuna wool stretching over a shoulder.

 

“I’ve half a mind to elope off with your wife right here.”

 

Lancelot turns, eyebrows pulled down low for a second before darting up and disappearing beneath his hairline, lips smoothened free of lines, eyes glinting with the delirium of joy- and he’s never looked better. He pauses, as if actually considering it, and asks in all seriousness, “Before my wedding night?”

 

Gwaine hooks his toe-cap under another stool and drags it, the wooden legs catching on the squeaky clean tiles; and lounges.

 

“I’m sorry, but I might have to challenge you to a duel to the death for that little indiscretion, my friend.” Lancelot fixates his eyes on him in all graveness, but even his poker face isn’t all that impeccable- anything is too frail to withstand the glow of that characteristic, quiet amusement shining through. Gwaine feels his lower lip twitch violently, and absently wonders at the havoc wreaked on the world if Lancelot would laugh.

 

“I cower in my boots, good sir.” He pats the man on the elbow, but of course his words come out more cocksured than dryly humorous. He still flows with it, and his ankles inevitably cross over themselves, the barstool warning creakily as it gets leaned back too far, balance wavering treacherously. The act gives him the precedented advantage of getting a better view of the groom, and he makes sure to exaggerate the sweeping eye of perusal. “If anyone could coax her away from you tonight, it is none but yours truly. Glad to see you finally wear clothes worth your skin, mate.”

 

Humility tinges the answering smile- as if Lancelot could ever smile any other way- and he traces a finger down the superbly-tailored, notched lapel of the suit, Morgana’s wedding gift, soft Italian leather peeking from under the stool, a newly glorified knight right in the middle of the Pendragons’ grandest dinner hall. The gleaming platinum cuffs off set the dark-enough-to-be-black wool, and the tanned skin of his wrists admirably. He sounds like he believes every word he says. “Just a pauper living off the generosities of greater people.”

 

Gwaine would sigh, except only elderly matrons and schoolteachers do that, and he’s not nearly horny enough for the former, or senile enough for the latter. Its not a million dollar secret of which Lancelot he infinitely prefers, the one of a few seconds ago, the one who shrugged off the mantle of perennial gravitas and joked about murdering Gwaine in good cheer, even if the entire world knows that Lancelot never trivialises death, even in jest. He feels like scoffing, except tried-and-tested experience has taught him that Lancelot would simply accept the jibes, and not rise up to the taunts unlike most sane people. Worst thing of all, Gwaine knows exactly where he is coming from.

 

To say that Gwen and Lancelot getting together had not been a surprise, would be an utter lie. They had been shocked, each and every one of them- because the entire school had known about the torch a thirteen-year old Lancelot had borne for Guinevere, who bantered flirtatiously with his best mate and hooked up with him at nineteen. In the wake of Arthur actually behaving _human_ in the aftermath and in the course of their seven-month relationship (shame, couldn’t Gwen have stuck on a little while longer?), no one could stop their jaws from dropping at the very public dumping of one befuddled Pendragon, and the immediate, equally private declaration of love for one self-sacrificing, now hysterical with happiness du Lac.

 

No one had expected it- for Gwen to pick the unassuming scholarship student over the flamboyant heir of Pendragon Co., but it had happened, and hence followed a whirlwind romance, and the sound of about a thousand girls’ hearts shattering to pieces (Gwaine has given up on convincing Lancelot of anything, because the stubborn idiot keeps insisting that they’re actually staring soppily at him). Then Gwen proposed to Lancelot in a bar, offering a plastic ring from a Christmas cracker, and he gaped at her with his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish while their friends wheezed tears of laughter and collected wagers (Elyan won. The cheat.) and everything had been perfectly dandy ever since.

 

Of course, things could always get better. If Gwaine tilts just a little, he can see a flash of red over Lancelot’s shoulder- lank blonde strands clinging to a pale nape, mouth flattened in an expression that smiles a lot and says nothing at all, the clean, striking lines of a Pendragon face. Arthur looks happy, he _seems_ happy, his elbows are propped on the table, spine flattened against the back of the chair, cerulean eyes intent- but though not as astute as Morgana, Gwaine is no blind fool. He wins every bluffing game that has and will ever be invented- and Arthur is a Pendragon sitting in a plastic chair pushed to the very corner of his own hall, at his oldest friend’s reception: and surely that can’t be a good thing. But worry isn’t something Gwaine’s mind takes very kindly to, and Arthur is currently rolling his eyes at his best mate making a fool of himself on the podium, smile small but still there; so Gwaine straightens back up, gaze turning back to familiar brown eyes. There’s a friend who requires the reassurances more right now....and he’s right here.

 

“Ah.” He says, and leans forward, as if to impart some great secret, eyes warmer than a bright, flickering fire in the night-time. “But would the Queen Guinevere bestow herself on a pauper?”

 

In the gleam of the answering smile, Gwaine has absolutely no doubt that Lancelot knows exactly what he’s doing, but the spark in the eye doesn’t seem all that disapproving. He has that wondrous joy back to his face again, the one barely contained by the man’s iron reserve, the one which seems, still, faintly disbelieving of the fact that this is his life- underlined all throughout by that ridiculously earnest determination of being the best he could possibly be. He needn’t worry. Lancelot hasn’t broken a single thing in his life.

 

Several seconds of mutual, contented silence lapse by, before Gwaine places his palms flat on the bartop and lifts himself up, wood screeching against the tile as the stool is pushed back. The music still trails on in the background, some sort of useless piano accompaniment Merlin no doubt picked out, and Arthur lamented over for hours after; the glasses, the bar, the polished floor, the night glittering- still new and stretching on, full of limitless possibilities, and Lancelot raises a brow at him from where he’s still seated.

 

“Elena will kick my sorry arse out of bed if I enter it one more time with a stinking mouth.” He flicks the forever-errant locks out of his eyes, then throws a friendly punch at the man’s shoulder, crooked grin intact. “Take care and have fun, mate.”

 

Lancelot’s hand rises up to grip his arm where the knuckles impacted the wool, palm kneading into the muscle beneath, resting there lightly. His gaze is steady. “I will.”

 

Gwen waves at him from across the room while he’s making his way to the door, who’s surrounded by an impenetrable wall of admirers who simply can’t seem to stop gushing about how ‘cuuuute’ everything is (He will never understand what it is about weddings that get women so hormonal), and Percy almost succeeds in ambushing him with a plate of hors d’oeuvres that look deceptively tiny for how absolutely scrumpelicious they are (Merlin’s not the only one who can invent words.) but Gwaine somehow manages to extract himself from the madness that is the wedding reception of two of the best people he’s ever met. Walks down the driveway, slides the key into his car door, revs up the engine of the Porsche and backs out of the gate, nodding at George while he passes- and in no time at all the car’s breezing down empty streets, the faint drizzle peppering the windowpanes, the glass fogging up from within.

 

Elena’s there, in the discoloured track pants she wears to bed, sliding her arms around his shoulders and across his chest while he peels off the slightly dampened suit jacket in the hallway- and he shifts around to snag her lips against his own, breathing softly. His elbow crooks around her waist and pulls her in, and she laughs against his stubble, fingering a lock of mahogany hair against her index finger and thumb. He releases her after a long moment, and she turns and starts heading up, her bare feet padding against the carpeted stairs.

 

“Good day?” She asks, flat on her back against maroon sheets, knees pulled up and thighs spread wide in a posture that’s as far from seductive as it gets. Gwaine closes the bedroom door fully behind him and approaches the bed from his side, thumb reaching down to hook under the hem of his shirt, pulling it up and over his head in a long, sloping movement. “Excellent.”

 

The shirt gets bunched up, then tossed over the back of a nearby chair, still unbuttoned. “Lancelot made Gwen and at least a half dozen of other women bawl into their handkerchiefs, Merlin of course contented himself by wiping his nose against his sleeve-” They share a common grin, the universal one which passes for- ‘ _oh, Merlin’_ , “The wedding cake was rotten, so Arthur got to stomp about and display his authority, the Maid of Honour appeared for half an hour in complete black, scandalising the other half dozen and disappearing with a twink soon after,” His belt clinks open, and he drops that too over the chair, toeing off his trousers. “Kay mooned after skirts, Percy mooned after food, Leon remained strictly virginal, and Elyan beamed upon the happy couple from the distance like a fairy godfather.” He drops against the mattress, feeling the cotton sheets rustle against his skin, and leans his chin up, cranking up a lazy smile. “Missed anything?”

 

“The speeches?” Elena asks, turning on her elbows, long blonde curls tumbling over bare shoulders.

 

“Merlin’s one was an absolute riot- I think he had Post-Its stuck to his hands.” Gwaine turns on his side, sliding over to his partner of seven weeks, proprietarily running his palm over the expanse of skin between her exposed shoulder blades, coming to rest on the back of her neck. He rests his stubbled cheek against the soft pillow. “Everyone else was pathetic, I nearly passed out from boredom.”

 

“You should have.” Elena tells him, very professionally. “Then you could have swooned into strong arms and gone into raptures. I’ve heard Arthur is very heroic.”

 

“Percy would’ve been better.” He informs her in turn, shifting his head slightly so that the words get muffled into the pillow. “Stronger arms.”

 

The wind had better not blow the wrong way now, because Elena looks permanently surprised with those long, thick eyebrows rising high above her forehead, rather than the coy, arching look she was probably going for. “Speaking from personal experience? Never knew you went for the strong, silent types.”

 

“Strong enough and the silence stops to matter.” His canine peeks, from between his lips, voice at the lowest base it goes just a few seconds before sleep. “Who’d want to speak when they have _this_ to listen to?”

 

“Always so humble, sweetheart.” She raises herself for a second to peck him on the jaw, then settles in, a few inches from his side.  

 

“Generous too.” His breath is moist against the pillowcase, chest rising and falling slowly. “How d’you feel about the strong, silent type? The bed’s big enough....and we speak enough for three, don’t ya think?”

 

“Just because I play along,” mumbles Elena, hand feeling up his chest to pat him sleepily on the cheek, “-doesn’t mean I’m a complete slag, Gwaine.”

 

“Flattered, love.” And the final waking breath rushes out from him and he’s asleep, and the light that they’ve forgotten to turn off yet again pricks drowsily against his eyelids- but even if they’re rich kids rebelling against their families, they were still bloody born rich, and electricity bills hardly figure into the concerns of such minds.

 

 

 

 

It’s because of the light, that Gwaine doesn’t know what time it is when the pesky ringing sound resonates through the house, and he kicks the sheets and knocks off the bedside lamp fumbling blindly for his phone before realising- fuck, it’s the blasted doorbell. Its several seconds he breathes listlessly, unmoving, into his pillow, several belated minutes after which he musters sufficient willpower to raise himself on his elbows, peering at the fluorescent digital numbers of the wall-clock, trying to comprehend which brainless bastard could be trying to destroy his bell at two o’clock at night (and no, he doesn’t give a flying fuck about what geography says about it being morning).

 

Elena lies there, snoring almost soundlessly like a log, while he forsakes the search for his shirt and ducks out of the bedroom doorway, because damn whoever the idiot may be, they certainly don’t deserve Gwaine in all his glory- but that stupid piece of fabric has probably rolled under the bed by now. He reaches the foot of the stairs, flips on the light switch of the lower landing and in two strides crosses over to the main door, pulling it open. This had better be an emergency of apocalyptic proportions, because he might just forgo slurred insults and jump straight on to the caveman bashing.

 

It proves useless, because Merlin’s standing there, drenched in the rain that has turned torrential during the night. His tan suit has turned dark brown, uniformly soaked, his shoes squelch as he shifts from foot to foot, the dark strands of hair are plastered to his pale forehead, draggled like a rat. He looks like something the storm dragged up and spat out during the night, and Gwaine opens the door fully, half-asleep mind starting to drift awake, uneasily, churning in confusion. He steps away to the side, mouth starting to open in the beginning of a question.

 

But Merlin doesn’t come in, and something in the hollows of the eyes, the blue nerves standing out starkly against the pallid skin, makes Gwaine’s jaw snap shut before a word could slip out. The rain pounds against the pavement on the streets outside.

 

“I....” Merlin starts, then stops again, mouth working uselessly. He sounds bewildered. “G...Gwen.”

 

Somewhere, unconsciously, Gwaine feels his heart start up behind his chest and start running, pounding, speeding through the motions. “What about Gwen?”

 

Merlin isn’t looking at him. He isn’t looking anywhere, just straight ahead, like a dead pair of eyes staring up into nothingness. “Gwen’s dead.”

 

And before Gwaine can silence him, speak over that reedy, croaking voice and insult him for speaking complete, utter shit; Merlin rushes on, Adam’s apple swallowing in his throat, words falling all around themselves, in fearful, horrific bewilderment like he’s afraid what to do with them. “Gwen’s dead and-”

 

“Gwaine?” Elena’s voice murmurs blearily from the top of the staircase, knuckles rubbing against her eyes, padding slowly down the steps. “Is there something wro-”

 

“-and Arthur killed her.”

 

 

 

~

 

 

 

_“Keep tigh’ darlin’.....” His mother’s face glowed under the sunlight, sweet and weary, palm clasped around sweaty, stubby fingers. The bicycle was wobbling, and the world spun around him, but she beckoned on with encouraging nods. “Don’ le’ go now....yes, tha’s it....my good, good boy....”_

 

Gwaine’s never liked silent places.

 

There’s a difference, some part of his mind thinks, between quiet places and silent ones. Contrary to what most may assume, he doesn’t dislike the quiet. Quiet was his home when his father was still alive, severe, disciplinarian- but alive, pen scratching steadily, shuffling papers on the desk, while he crouched on his knees on the divan below the windowsill and snapped pictures through the glass. Quiet was their auditorium the day of graduation, everyone sitting still for hours altogether, soaking in the air of belonging for one last time before they stepped out into the world. Quiet was the St. Avalon rooftoop, which took him so close to the sky, where he had been content to drain alcohol down his throat and merely exist, for a while. Quiet was the morning of 17th May, 2006, when Guinevere Smith had placed her hand in that of Lancelot du Lac, under a frail summer sky and the watchful eye of her loved ones, promising to keep her hand tight for a lifetime.

 

Blackhall Cemetery is silent. Just silent.

 

Maybe when the rain stops, the blackbirds will come out again, after whom the place was named. Now, the rain keeps falling and falling, thundering past the skins of their black umbrellas, forming muddy, colourless puddles on the ground. Its like a glass of water upended into a watercolour painting, the colour running everywhere in long, slow rivulets till everything trickles off the page, till everything is washed out and colourless and it doesn’t seem like a picture was ever there.

 

The world is their painting now, running everywhere and they’re getting washed out along with it.

 

Merlin, Morgana, and Gwaine. They’re the only three attending the funeral. Elyan, who’d been fighting depression since fifteen, had been hospitalised soon after the night. Leon, Percy, Kay, Bedivere.....all who’d been there that night had been taken for questioning. They were taking Lancelot’s statement today. Arthur was in custody.

 

All this seems to be happening in a very, very distant world outside the roaring static in Gwaine’s head. The world has been muted, all words muddled up and incomprehensible, time an unpredictable thing that speeds up and slows down on its whim- the car drive through the thick of London traffic took two seconds, but he has been standing in the cemetery for years, seeing and not seeing the dark grey suit cuff with which Merlin wipes his nose, and the oddly appropriate black dress that Morgana still hasn’t taken off since the morning of the wedding. He watches the little wooden box that they lower into the ground, and he’d always ribbed Gwen mercilessly over her height, but she’d never been that small. She can’t fit, possibly.....in that little toy of a thing that the black-tied man speaks elaborate words that make no sense, over; then turned to the side from time to time and grumbled about the rain.

 

Gwaine watches it all, like through a pane of glass turned translucent by the rain, the world foggy and blurry and ununderstandable outside. To make it easier, he clicks pictures with his eyes- the mud encrusted on the bottom of Morgana’s heel, the droplets dripping off from her parasol and getting soaked into the grass, her talon-like nails, some chipped at the edges, buried deep, deep into her white arms; Merlin’s thin, bony shoulders bunched again the rain, his thinner, colourless lips, the water clinging to his eyelashes; the vicar’s mouth, blurred, caught in motion; the smooth brown wood of the coffin, already cold and damp under the downpour. It’s easier trapping scenes inside a camera, to hold people within the white-bordered, four cornered prison of a photograph, to appreciate aesthetics and lines and angles and lighting- because otherwise they’d stop being two-dimensional and he’d remember, remember those talon-tipped fingers tracing eloquent words into the air as Morgana postulated on her latest pet project, Gwen nodding in complete concentration opposite her, Merlin’s lips dropping an affectionate kiss on her head, nestled among brown curls as Gwen’s mouth curled up sweetly beneath her veil. Remember that an absolute stranger has no business talking about his friend in the past tense, that all the fanciest words in the world cannot hope to capture that what is the smallest essence of _Gwen_ ; but she is caught inside that _thing_ , and they are lowering it into the ground, and are shoveling soil and pebbles and all that is hateful on the top, obscuring it from view- and she can’t possibly _breathe_ under all of that, and they need to get her out, they have to stop, they have to stop _right now-_

-And Merlin calls out for them to stop, and Gwaine can choke him to death in a hug, so overwhelming is his relief; but his friend steps forward only for an instant, hand withdrawing from his pocket, something loosely clasped in his fingers. A few more seconds and he draws back, and there’s a white peony lying against the wood now, tilted on its side, petals wilted and a little crushed. There’s no point, something bitter within his mind speaks, the sight of the drooping petals sustaining him as the soil starts to pile up once more; the flower’s already dying, and now it will be swallowed up by the earth, crushed under darkness, rotted to filth, devoured by maggots till there’s nothing left. Nothing left, it says again, as the vicar leaves and the rain keeps falling and the blackbirds refuse to come.

 

Soon, there is nothing but a fresh mound of earth where a living, breathing woman once stood, and Morgana turns furiously on her heels and stalks away, nails clawing fruitlessly at her arms, and Merlin’s knees hit the ground, back slouched over, shoulders shaking and crumbling into themselves, and Gwaine stands; mind wiped blank, every inch of his skin wet except for his eyes, listening to the silence tear into his eardrums.

 

 

 

~

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 “Your name?”

 

“Kendall Millers. Kay for short.”

 

“Your occupation, Mr. Millers?”

 

“I work in security. Mr. Pendragon’s company employs me.”

 

“How do you know the accused?”

 

“Arthur’s a good mate. We used to play footie back in school, together.” Kay pauses for a moment, chews at his lower lip and adds uneasily. “I got to know....got to know Gwen through him.”

 

“What is your....... frank opinion, of Mr. Pendragon?”

 

“Oh. Erm.” Kay glances nervously across the room at Arthur for a second, almost as if seeking approval, and the entire thing is so ludicrous that Gwaine almost feels like laughing out loud, a bit. “Uh.....well, Uther can be a bit of a cranky bastard at times-”

 

“The younger Pendragon, if you please,” interjects the prosecution lawyer gently.

 

“R...right. Sorry.” Kay flushes, and its downright surreal to see their six foot one inch goalie strapped into a pinstriped suit and fidgeting in the witness box. “Arth...I know Arthur since I first transferred to Avalon in ninth grade. He was a good guy.....made me feel right at home, offered me a place on the team just a few weeks in. He’s........ fair, good to the people he cares about, takes care of them. Has got a bloody wicked left foot, you should see him on the field-”

 

“Thank you Mr. Millers.” The lawyer cuts off Kay’s ramble with an efficient, polite smile. “Where were you the night of May the seventeenth?”

 

And here’s where it all begins.

 

Its all very simple, the papers report. Even typical, one might say. On the night of May the seventeenth, the wedding reception of Lancelot and Guinevere du Lac was being held in the fifth dining hall of the official Pendragon residence. As the night drew on, the party shifted from the Hall to the rooftop pool, guests relaxing and enjoying themselves. At around 11:45, the bride was observed approaching the owner of the home, one Arthur Pendragon, up till now entertaining the various invitees. Apparently she was rebuked by the host, several times over, shirking off her hand and slurring loudly that he had no interest in talking to her. Words were exchanged, voices raised- beginning to attract the attention of the other guests, and while now Mrs du Lac tried to withdraw, Pendragon seemed insistent on speaking his word. The groom finally got involved, walking over to the decorative lights strung up in the corner of the terrace under which the argument was taking place, placing a hand on his wife’s elbow to calm, pacify the tensions straining the air and tempers running high. She turned to leave, Pendragon pulled her back by the wrist, a two second scuffle, then......

 

Excessively simple, they say. An open and shut case. The verdict is unmistakable. His fantastic career, his undeniable climb to power, is all ended before it could ever truly begin. Royal or not, Arthur Pendragon’s fate is sealed.

 

“I......I was at the Residence.” Kay fiddles with the button on his cuff. “At the party.”

 

“And what exactly, would you please tell us, happened at the party at a few minutes before midnight?”

 

“......Arthur was pissed.” Kay says, and a thread is now poking out of his cuff, his index finger winding and unwinding around it continuously. “Drunk off his rocker. He’d been behaving like an arse to Merlin the entire evening, b-but that was really normal, really. Merlin got into a strop and stormed off, and Arthur was sort of......loitering at the edge of the roof. A little moody, but everyone gets like that at times, right? I mean, if I don’t get my stew in my belly every night before bed, my mum says I act like a compl-”

 

“And then Miss Guinevere approached him?” The lawyer presses.

 

Kay’s face is ruddy now, nose shining with sweat, wet patches appearing on his elbows. The thread has snagged on his nail, and with a hard pull it comes off, button skittering off and rolling on to the middle of the courtroom, small and unnoticed. “...Yeah. Yeah she....she’d been glancing at him all throughout the evening, and I knew it was gonna blow up sooner than later.”

 

“Whore.” sniffs the girl with the blue highlights sitting three seats to the right of Gwaine, and he feels like hooking his nail through the little silver ring pierced through her lower lip and pulling, ripping it clean off from the skin.

 

“...they were talking....well Gwen was trying to talk, and the others were starting to look....it was looking to be one of the ugly ones. I dunno what about though....I was standing too far, by the bar. When....when it started getting real loud, Lance walked over, and I thought, its all fine now, he’s got a steady head, he’d get them both to cool off. I....” Kay’s eyes cloud over, its indistinguishable what he’s thinking about. Fear, confusion.....regret, perhaps. “For a second, I’d thought it had worked too. It was silent. Then Gwen turned her back and started walking away, and Arthur stopped her, and....”

 

And Kay pauses again, for one more bloodboiling, infuriating time and looks at Arthur- blonde head bowed, dressed in a grey suit that bleached out his skin, face shadowed; and somehow it becomes all too apparent where their goalie isn’t looking. Gwaine doesn’t resist, his eyes follow the exact opposite path that Kay took, spanning across the room and landing on him. Lancelot. In that first second, he doesn’t have the strength to register how the man looked.

 

But still, it appears he has looked too long, because the lawyer’s voice is now filling the large, echoing room- painstakingly, courteously confused. “I’m sorry? Could you repeat that please?”

 

“I said,” Kay repeats, and his voice is too loud for the three by five witness box, too invasive- “I went to the loo after that. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t see anything.”

 

Across a distance of more than ten metres, divided by the aisle and spaces and people, Gwaine sees Lancelot’s eyes blink, and he sees nothing too, for several belated seconds. In the aftermath of the anticlimactic reply, the people’s voices rise as murmurs, the judge rapping his little steel hammer on the the wooden top of the table, the lawyer rephrasing the question in as many ways and phrases as possible, but Kay remains unmoving, stubbornly repeating again and again that he had seen nothing. After thirty minutes, he is allowed to leave the box, and Gwaine watches Lancelot’s eyes dip, for a second, to the ground, and knows that he’s seen the button too.

 

After that, the time fleets fast. Bedivere was nursing a pint at the time the incident happens, he says. Back turned to the parapet. Gareth was too busy vomiting up his guts in the potted plant to pay much of attention to anything. Galahad goes a step further and insists he remembers nothing happening at all, he was staring off at the constellations in the sky, too ‘distracted’. Gwaine wonders if he remembers Lancelot staying up with him the nights before the exams, teaching him how to map out the sky.

 

And that, that proves to be his undoing, because his eyes fleet back and Lancelot sits there, knees joined together, hands out and palms flat against each thigh, staring at the wood-barred box steadily. His white shirt has starch creases, down its collar, there are a thousand miniature lines that have sprung up under that impassive mouth and those tired eyes, there is a seven day old gold band encircling the third finger on his right hand, and he won’t fucking stop looking.

 

 _Look at me._ Gwaine thinks, and the thought is a familiar one, often rebounding around the confines of his mind in the olden, sunny days spent doodling during a languid class period; but the motive is so horrifically, tragically different- that he’s never thought it with so much desperate, scrabbling urgency before, urgency he himself doesn’t understand. _Not there.....anywhere but there....just look- look at me._

“Percival Wainright.” Someone calls, and Lancelot straightens fractionally in his seat, chin up, eyes intent and hopeful.

 

He thinks he hears nothing of the questions, nothing of the answers, so focused is he in recording every single minor twitch of Lancelot’s expression, every time a muscle tightens or relaxes in that clean jaw, thinks its wondrous how well he himself is handling all of this considering the conflicted, half-disbelieving, guilt ridden look that’s characterised Arthur’s face ever since Kay first opened his mouth- but of course he’s wrong. He’s never been good at delusions, and this time is no different. He’s terribly, horribly wrong.

 

“..and I’m really sorry,” Percy apologises in that rumbling, sincere, gentle-giant tone he has, “-but I was really drunk at the time, and try as hard as I can, I just can’t seem to _remember_ -”

 

_“We really need to stop doing hooking up like this.” Percy’s solid arms wrap around his waist, breath possessive against his ear. “I’d rather fancy kissing you when your mouth’s not stinking like something crawled up and died there, for a change.”_

_“No’......not my faul’ you’re such a comp..complete teetotaler, ya girl’s blouse.” The music seems to grind in Gwaine’s very bones, take up residence in his veins and set fire to every bit of their skin in contact. He bites at the skin stretching over Percy’s nape. “Now stop talking.”_

Lancelot’s hand stretches out for the glass of water beside him, and fastens around the base. He raises it to his lips, and drinks, and to the eyes of someone who’s been watching a long, long time, there are minute, imperceptible tremors working their way underneath brown skin, making fingers shake; the rim of the glass leaking a traitorous drop that trickles slowly past the jaw.

 

Gwaine’s own jaw is numb, he realises, and its surprising how the teeth haven’t cracked and splintered already, littering the mouth with jagged pieces of enamel, ground to dust. His arms are vibrating in place, his toes curled tight into his boots, something much darker than grief has begun clotting into the blood surging past his arteries, sticking into his chest, holding it drawn, compressed and tight. His eyes- hard, unyielding, unblinking are holding on to the wooden box.

 

“One of our final witnesses for the day, your Honour.” The lawyer voices quietly.

 

Leon doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t look at Arthur, or Lancelot, or anyone else seated quietly in the audience with their heart thumping, but directs his voice straight to the judge. “I saw Gwen heading towards Arthur. She was just trying to talk reasonably, he was refusing to listen. Talking loudly, insisting on drawing attention. Gwen didn’t like that, and when Lance came, she naturally turned to leave.”

 

 _And then?_ The lawyer doesn’t need to voice it, that is the question running rampant through the minds of every person seated in that large, suffocating hall, palms sweating, curiosities piqued. _What happened then?_

Leon’s throat works for a second, and he lifts his chin, covered by the scraggly beard he’d never quite dropped since his college days. Honest Leon, Prefect Leon, Valedictorian Leon speaks, and there is no hesitation in his voice. “Then Gwen stumbled over her heel while turning, and she fell over.”

 

There’s a hand immediately at his elbow, a sweaty, relentless grip, and a pleading voice, “No, Gwaine, _no_ -” because Gwaine has surged ahead, half out of his seat, blood pounding in his veins, mind a raging blank of nothingness and Merlin needs to _let go, dammit_ and that feral, low-pitched snarl surely isn’t his, but it is, and: “How dare....how _dare_ they-” But Merlin is pulling him back, back and he can push him off but Lancelot’s finally looking at him now, his face a mixture of something- some bloody thing, but there’s definitely concern in there too, and that sets off an entire new flash of anger  scalding across his senses, directed at Lancelot because _of course_ , of course fucking Lancelot would still care about his fucking _friends_ while they all had......

 

Gwaine feels the hard, flat wood of the courtroom bench collide with his tailbone, all the air escapes in a rush out of his throat, but his chest is tied, lungs contracted tight together, refusing to release. The dim sound of heels clicking against concrete and a door slamming in the distance alerts his ears that Morgana hasn’t been able to control herself as well as he has; the murmurs start up again, people swiveling their necks and craning around- and if this were any other place on any other day, Merlin would give him a sideways look, raising his blue eyes to the heavens, Gwaine replying with an indolent eye roll- their internal, part exasperated, part fond communion on melodramatic Pendragons.

 

But this isn’t, and Merlin’s already looking ahead, the ragged cuticles at the end of his long fingers curled into the terrycloth of his overlong trousers bunched around his knees. The face is turned to the front, but the veins are standing out on the throat, almost nauseously vivid, continuous raised bumps against the transparent skin. An almost inaudible breath shudders out from that thin chest; and from all of them, Merlin has never showed even a jot of fear before, and through the haze of red obscuring his vision, the wry thought flitters across Gwaine’s mind- what could possibly have brought this on now? It wasn’t like things could get any worse.

 

The lawyer’s voice is oddly muted, easy to miss. “Last witness.”

 

Then Lancelot stands up.

 

Those footsteps- the sound of his plain brown loafers echoing against the wooden floorboards, are the clearest sound Gwaine’s heard all day. Yes, he doesn’t have the courage to raise his head and watch the childhood friend of half the people in this court fenced in by the mahogany pillars of the witness box. So there. But the lawyer asks, subdued: “Name?” and the voice that follows is so fucking _honest_ that something in Gwaine persists, and his eyes flicker above.

 

“Lancelot du Lac.”

 

“Date of birth?”

 

“8th June, 1987.” So clear. Though moderated in volume, his voice still rings through the courtroom like a bell at toll, cutting through all the rabble. A detached part of Gwaine wonders if he’s the only one who can see those knuckles calmly resting against the balustrade shaking.

 

“First acquaintance with the victim?”

 

“School.” Lancelot says, and there is something so perfectly restrained about the way he’s holding himself, back straight but shoulders braced: as if a man gathering strength to weather a storm. Those lips barely move while they speak. “She…..we were in kindergarten together. Graduated together.”

 

Because he can’t keep looking, Gwaine watches the ignorant girl with the blue highlights instead, and sees her eyes widen, something like sorrow and sympathy cross her face- and she leans forward, as if to listen better. Over half the people seated in court who don’t know what exactly happened, who don’t know _them_ \- unconsciously mirror her move.

 

“Your relation to her when she…..uh, till the night of May the seventeenth?” The lawyer winces slightly in good taste, but continues thereon with the utmost gentleness. As if he doesn’t know that that was the bluntest, cruellest thing to do, and trying to so obviously, crudely smoothen it over twists the dagger in just that bit deeper.

 

“She is my wife.” And no one, no one in that struck mute, cemetery-like courtroom misses the present tense.

 

_“Because dying doesn’t make him any less of a father. Your father.” Lancelot says, every time Christmas comes along and Gwaine stares sullenly at the twinkling lights and the snowmen and the empty study in the family home he has re-acquisitioned after a seven year long battle that seems so futile, now._

“How long?” The lawyer asks gently, and the same accursed part of Gwaine that he himself would never be able to understand, the part that resorts to bitter humour to tide things over, puts himself in Lancelot’s place and muses on a reply. ‘Forever and a day,” probably. And he’d fail miserably to keep the sarcasm out of it.

 

“A day.” A chorus of muted gasps and murmurs of, ‘oh, the poor dear’ break throughout the courtroom, and Gwaine wants to break something. Like enough hasn’t been broken already.

 

“Your relation with the accused?” The lawyer’s tone is quieter, more staid. Someone needs to go and twist the end of his Windsor-bound, checkered tie around his scrawny throat and asphyxiate the life out of him.

 

Lancelot hesitates. His eyes have been fixed on the black-suited lawyer throughout, and for someone who’s been sitting on the benches looking at either the witness box or Arthur throughout the hearing, those clear brown eyes do an impeccable job of avoiding the other end of the room now. Like they don’t want to seem accusatory.

“Best friend.” There’s no past or present in there, but while those brown eyes remain almost impossibly steady, Arthur’s blues have already turned glassy.

 

And it wasn’t fair, their ten year old selves would have whined. The world knew that Merlin was Arthur’s best friend, but he could have ……. shown some consideration, surely?

 

“What happened on the night of May the seventeenth?”

 

The court draws a collective breath. This is what they all have been waiting for. The law students huddled at one corner of the benches, the distinguished jury, the hyena-like journalists with their pens quivering just an inch above the paper and the photographers ready to swoop down and snap one moue of anger, one traitorous tear, one unguarded moment. They’ve been waiting for the commoner who attended Avalon to level accusations against Arthur Pendragon, the greatest Royal of them all, his best friend; of murdering his wife and their common love.

 

There are no introductions. No suspense building moments, no accounts of the night, the people, the atmosphere, the argument that preceded or the grief that followed. Just the helpless words wrenched out from the most dignified man Gwaine’s ever known.

 

Lancelot looks away, at the barred window behind the jury’s enclosure- and Gwaine realises it too late, but those eyes aren’t steadfast, they’re insensate. Like the pain has been dammed up from inside, a prisoner banging on stone walls a feet thick of a dungeon appearing perfectly silent from the outside, with no hope of ever being heard. “He pushed her over.”

 

There’s a small, choking sound from the right, and Gwaine’s almost forgotten Merlin is there, too. The man rocks into himself, back bowed, lips compressed tightly, but almost like watching a ghost of himself, Gwaine does nothing to comfort him.

 

He merely sits, as the hearing speeds to an end and the words ‘hostile witnesses’ and ‘date of next hearing’ penetrate his ears as if from a great distance. His arse and legs are numbed with lack of blood flow when the court disperses, the girl with the blue highlights talking rapidly with her neighbour on what a huge tragedy this is as they meander out of the door. When he finally makes his knees unfold and limbs come back to life, he staggers to his feet and pins and needles break out over the skin, plastered to the trouser cloth by sweat.

 

He looks over to Arthur’s golden, bowed head still fenced in by wooden pillars, but Merlin’s already there, his thin lips appearing to move soundlessly at this distance, while Arthur stares blankly at the floor. He remembers nothing, Gwaine realises suddenly- the Pendragon had probably fallen asleep on a goosedown pillow one night and woken up the next morning to find himself a betrayer of the first friend he ever had and murderer of the woman he loved, with no memory of the deeds. And all his closest friends insisted there were no deeds to feel guilty over, except the word of one man whose honesty no one had ever dared to impugn.   

 

His feet move as if guided by some unseeing force, a blink; and he’s out of the courtroom and the empty corridor walls loom around him, footsteps echoing hollowly in his ear. If comprehension still held residence in his mind, then he would have thought he was wandering aimlessly- but its only when his fingers fasten around something cold and round and hard, and the door clicks open, the sound of running water faintly trickling into his ears, that realisation seeps in that he’d known where he was heading all along.

 

His soles squeak against the wet tile of the washroom, and the man inside barely stiffens. There’s water running down Lancelot’s wrists, past the wrinkled shirt sleeves, cuffs unbuttoned and wet, collar open and water splashes down the front that’s turned the white cotton dark and blotchy. He’s standing in front of the sinks, hands braced on the discoloured white ceramic of a basin, the line of his spine taut and starkly visible against the fabric of the shirt stretched tight over his bowed back, lowered head casting most of his face in shadow. Gwaine watches his throat bob in the mirror, swallow over skin soaked with the sheen of sweat, and there’s no sound in the room except that of the tap running and human breaths.

 

Then Lancelot raises himself and surrenders support of one hand to reach out for the tarnished steel of the tap, the sound of water fading slowly as the screech of metal joints permeates the air inhabiting the room. A last plink echoing quietly against the ceramic announces the falling of the last drop. Then in a move that appears almost, almost effortless, Lancelot lifts his head and looks back straight, calm, in the mirror; and the room is so _loud_ in the silence.

 

His skin is vibrating, Gwaine realises; every single inch of it squirming and prickling and burning and threatening to rip- because he has never, ever quite _despised_ something, no, not even cruel Royals, as much as that man in the mirror. His teeth rots with it, and he presses them together in order to stop the flow, to stop the acid disgust from escaping.

 

He fails.

 

“So.” And his voice is a cracking whip in the silence, gratingly friendly and offhand, but Lancelot barely flinches. “How’s things going?”

 

Lancelot doesn’t reply. A hand lifts to snag a piece of tissue, tearing a jagged piece from the loo roll placed in a fixture just adjacent to the basin, and Lancelot wipes his hands down with it; and this should have clued Gwaine in to the fact that the veneer was not quite as composed and flawless as it appeared, not for a man who used to always carry handkerchiefs in his pocket for all his other grubby friends. But it doesn’t, because Gwaine isn’t thinking clearly, _can’t_ \- not when the movements of drying of hands and shaking down of sleeves over the arms and buttoning the cuffs happening before him are so enragingly, enragingly calm.

 

“Well?” His voice snaps, and the end of Lancelot’s mouth lifts- and its almost invisible, lasting for a second, more of a twitch than an actual smile- but Gwaine’s vision is flooded with red, hands clenched into fists hard enough for nails to pare skin from the palms, jaw tight and tongue brittle with the effort to keep from screaming. Because what happened outside, in that hateful little courtroom that ruled on lies and power and injustice, is enough to batter away at the foundations of Gwaine’s world, no matter how cynical a man he might be. And here is Lancelot, with the foundations of his world wiped out completely and….and Gwaine’s mind turns blank with rage, eyes closed tight enough to hurt; and here he is, daring to _smile._ Here is the man who’d believed in nothing but the best in all people and done nothing but good, and his wife had been killed in recompense, his friends plunging a dagger into his back- and he is still _buttoning his cuffs_ in front of Gwaine pretending that it doesn’t matter, pretending that the only family that has ever provided shelter to him, to both of them, turning their backs doesn’t count, pretending that he’s alright and pretending _so_ _fucking_ _well_ that Gwaine almost believes him.

 

“Of all the people in the world Lancelot…” His voice lingers, barely, breath tracing the words. “..I’d never have pegged you to be a coward.”

 

The movement ceases. Lancelot’s left hand drops to his side, cuff still unbuttoned- and Gwaine feels causelessly, vindictively pleased.

 

“After all that has happened in there,” He says, and takes two steps forward, voice flawless and head still ringing with rage. “If it had been me, I’d have walked across court and ripped those bastards limb to limb.” The following words are almost light in their delivery. “And here you are, cowering in the washroom.”

 

Lancelot’s shoulders are straight. He buttons up his collar, caramel skin disappearing behind white, starched cotton. His fingers barely shake. The smile is gone.

 

“But no. That doesn’t quite seem in character for you.” Gwaine muses and crosses the last few steps to reach the row of sinks. He stops at the basin next to Lancelot’s, and turns around, leaning back to prop his hip against the edge of the ceramic, even as dampness soaks into the waist of his trousers. They are closer now, would have been standing shoulder to shoulder if Gwaine hadn’t been leaning on the sink. Even with the distance closed, and Gwaine’s eyes not one metre away, Lancelot’s expression is as indiscernible as ever. Gwaine’s fingers dig into the ceramic. “Pity. You actually thought you were a part of them. Belonged.”

 

Lancelot’s eyes close, and the flickering light from the electric bulb mounted in the wall casts shadows of his lashes on his cheek. The artificial light is white and glaring and unforgiving, and picks out every haggard line on that brow, the gaunt darkness underneath the eyes, the almost blanched colour of the cracking lips. And despite all this, he is still impenetrable. Untouched. Holding on to the fort like it costs him nothing while his face screams in contradiction.

 

“It’s your bleedin’ heart, isn’t it?” The words are a hiss, a whisper caressing the skin and tearing up the insides. Gwaine relishes in them like a draught of poison. “That even after they kicked you to the curb like a mangy dog, you still _care_ so very much for them.”

 

Lancelot doesn’t move. Gwaine advances closer, almost able to smell the sweat off the man’s skin. “Noble, self-sacrificing _saint_ Lancelot.” He says, eyes paring through every inch of Lancelot’s skin, teeth biting through the consonant. Hatred has robbed the breath from his lungs, squeezed it out of his throat. “You should just give up on this scam of getting justice for Gwen, you know. Withdraw the case.”

 

And then, Lancelot moves. Doesn’t plow his fist through Gwaine’s jaw, breaking his teeth, like Gwaine has been hungering for him to do since the second he stepped onto the white, cracked tiles. Lancelot pulls back from the sink and backs up a step, face lined with tiredness and resignation and yes, aching nobility. “I won’t.”

 

Won’t. Gwaine stares at him, sees the same man who was sitting with a straight spine through three hours in the courtroom today, refusing to react. Not can’t. Won’t.

 

“You’re ready to see Arthur hang then?” His voice makes a last, pitiful attempt at bitter mockery.

 

“This is not about me.” Lancelot says, quiet enough for the sound to mingle almost unnoticeably into the silence blanketing the white walls. Then brown eyes shift up and Gwaine is pinned, as sure as if there had been a sword pinioning his sleeve to the wall, and he doesn’t know why that’s the metaphor that rises first into his mind. Pinned and baptised in pure, scalding, liquid shame. “Or you.”

 

Another step away, and now Lancelot is far enough to hide all the lines, all the exhaustion. It’s impossible to see anything else but that unwavering certainty, and there isn’t even a crack in his voice as he speaks her name. He wouldn’t disgrace it that way. “This is about

Gwen.”

 

And before Gwaine can blink, can retaliate, can even speak through the anger still clouding his head and the new born shame clogging his throat, Lancelot turns and walks away. Pauses for a second at the doorway, and without even doing Gwaine the dignity of turning his face to address him, speaks- in that softly understanding tone that’s the most brutal thing Gwaine has ever withstood. “You don’t have to feel guilty for this, Gwaine.”      

 

And for how pathetically he has been behaving, Gwaine is no fool. ‘This’ does not refer to the petty, almost childishly malicious way he has been attempting to get beneath Lancelot’s skin. The door clicks shut softly, the footsteps resonate down the hollow corridor as they walk away, and Gwaine stares at the tiles- scraped at the edges, the colour of sour cream with ages and ages of use. He raises his knuckles to his eyes and scrubs- the electric light is too blinding, too bright, straining past his retina and taking residence behind his temples as the onset of a headache. All the while his mind recoils- guilty? _Guilty_? Why guilty? What for? _He_ hasn’t done anything.

 

Gwaine’s hand drops to the side, raw eyes blinking at the mirror, at the dark apparition there.

 

Lancelot’s world is gone and he hasn’t done _anything_.

 

Memory shifts, and he remembers Lancelot’s lip curling over the last words. Word.

 

No, it wasn’t privileging at all. Nothing more than a last gift of pity.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure: I don't have much written on the page for after this, even though I know exactly where it's going and how it ends, why the characters are doing what they're doing. Just wanted to test the waters to see if there's any interest, that's all. Tell me if any of it appealed :)


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